Hope on Hollow Hill.(pro- Zapatista prisoners)(Brief Article)

The Mexican prison known as Cerro Hueco, or Hollow Hill, resembles a bustling market. One damp corridor--filled with taco stands and visiting toddlers--leads to a two-story dormitory. It is home to dozens of supporters of the Zapatista rebels, the guerrillas who captivated the world seven years ago when they invaded four small towns in the poor southern state of Chiapas, their media-savvy, masked leader demanding equal rights for Indians. Manuel Gutierrez Mendez and Antonio Arias Hernandez, once neighbors in a mountain village, have been at Cerro Hueco for a year. They were picked up on murder charges last January after villagers accused them of participating in a deadly ambush in 1997. "It is a lie," Gutierrez told NEWSWEEK, "made up because we are supporters of the Zapatistas."

Freedom may not be far away. Last weekend the state government released 14 pro- Zapatista prisoners--many held on charges that prosecutors now admit were highly suspect--and continued to review several dozen more cases. The liberation is one of several measures Mexico's new president, Vicente Fox, has undertaken to promote peace in Chiapas. After their 12-day offensive in 1994, the rebels, named for Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata, were pushed into a jungle stronghold. Fox, who toppled the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) after 71 years in power, once bragged that he could solve the conflict in 15 minutes. In his first month in office, he has already eliminated 53 Army checkpoints, sent an indigenous-rights bill to the legislature and shut down a key Army base. After 1996 peace negotiations failed, the rebels refused to talk with the PRI government. But with the PRI defeated, both at the national level and in Chiapas, the rebels have little choice but to bargain. The pipe- smoking leader known as Subcomandante Marcos has said that he may come to Mexico City, mask and all, in February to plead the indigenous cause before Congress.

Even if peace officially arrives in Chiapas, it could take years before communities settle their own accounts. The indigenous pop-ulation-- about a third of the state's 4 million people--is bitterly split over the rebels, with villages, and even families, divided between pro- Zapatista peasants and pro-PRI neighbors, some of whom have organized themselves into militias. It is unlikely that 50-year-old Gutierrez or 32-year-old Arias, even if they get out of prison, could go back to Tzanembolom, their fog-draped village, any time soon.

Hostilities among the peasants there first erupted into violence on the morning of Oct. 15, 1997. Armed men invaded, killing a 14-year-old boy and a 25-year-old man, both from families that supported the PRI and opposed the rebels. A militia chased Gutierrez and Arias and their families into the mountains. They eventually resettled in San Pedro Pohlo, one of 38 ...